Kyle MacLachlan: ‘I thought ‘Showgirls’ would be hard-hitting’

Kyle MacLachlan has admitted that he was surprised when he saw the finished edit of Showgirls.

The Twin Peaks star played club boss Zack Carey opposite Elizabeth Berkley in the widely-panned 1995 movie about strippers in Las Vegas. But he has now admitted that he thought he was going into a “hard hitting” movie and was shocked when the film turned out to be a “camp classic”.

We all went into it with absolute conviction. Had we gone into it thinking we were making a camp classic we’d have ruined the camp element.

“It had to be taken seriously as we were filming it. Only when it was assembled and I saw it for the first time, I thought, ‘Oh boy, this isn’t going to be pretty.’ Everyone has their Showgirls. We remember the great films actors have been in and the rest get forgotten. But occasionally, people like to revisit the ones that get swept aside.”

Looking back on the experience, MacLachlan said: “I went into that film with the best of intentions. [Director] Paul Verhoeven and [writer] Joe Eszterhas were at the top of their game and I trusted they’d deliver something that would be controversial and hard-hitting.

“It turned into something completely different. The fun of it is it’s found its own niche in an unexpected way. People still get a kick out of it. I remember the experience and kind of laugh at the movie. At the time, the finished film came as a surprise.”